The Analysis of The Book "Mistress Suffragette" by Dianna Forbes

Mistress Suffragette, written by Dianna Forbes, starts out set in 19th century New England during the panic of 1893. A time period where a womans reputation was absolutely everything. Penelope, the main character, is a very strong willed and spunky young woman. Her mother is trying to get her and her younger sister suitors that would be able to financially support them. At a memorial day ball, Penelope catches the eye of a very wealthy and very married man. Mr. Edgar Daggers is a banker and seems to be very taken with Penelope.

After several encounters Mr. Daggers and his wife extend a position of employment to Penelope. They promise her the financial security that both her and her family are longing for. Much to her complete dismay her parents (who are in a state of financial crisis) are now ready to ship her off to go live with Mr. And Mrs. Daggers. Penelope on the other hand has her own ideas on the matter. A couple of things that I really liked about this book is that Penelope has a mind of her own. Even with her reputation at stake she wants to follow her own heart.

For example, Mr. Daggers' advances and job offers is not what she wants for herself, so instead of letting her parents force a life on her that she does not want, she decides to take her own route. I also like that she didnt fall immediately for someone who had money just because the opportunity was presented to her. Instead, she decided that she was going to do it herself. This book and its talk on the suffragette movement shows that women can do things their way and dont need a man to make something of themselves. A dislike that I did have was, although the author Diana Forbes did an absolutely amazing job of setting the tone of the time period, it was way to involved for my tastes. I feel like she went into more detail than was needed.

For me, it took away from the story line.I am going to rate this book a 3 out of 4. The reason for this rating being a 3 and not a 4 is because even though I absolutely loved this book, I had issues getting completely immersed in the actual storyline. The extreme details of the time period and surroundings to some may add to the story but for me I feel that it took away from it. The reason I did not drop the number of stars more is because she did make sure she gave us a very clear picture of what time was like inside of penelope's view. I believe that anyone who enjoys reading Victorian history type fiction would really enjoy this book. This book would probably fall more towards a female crowd.